Archive for May, 2009

>Yes – August 3rd … at the Greenville County Club. You can never do too much planning when it comes to golf. This is traditionally one of the best-attended and most competitive golf outings of the year. Click on the thumbnail for all the details – and to print off your registration/sponsorship form.

>As a reminder, you can subscribe to this website simply by filling in your email address in the box on the upper-lefthand portion of this page. By doing this, you will receive a daily email of all DarkeJournal stories – and on occasion, other special stories or announcements.

But keep in mind … the subscription emails are convenient, but also typically inferior, to what you get on the website itself – as the emails do not include video, slideshows, reader comments, obituary links, and anything else that might be included on the left sidebar of this site. The emails, however, do provide links to the site – so click away if something looks interesting.

Update/speed issues: A few people have commented that the webpage is loading slowly. This is a tough thing – because it’s all the fun/interesting items that slow down the webpage: videos, pictures, widgets, feeds, etc. The biggest offender was probably the WHIO news ticker, which requires a flash player. So we have removed the ticker – and have also reduced the number of frontpage stories from 30 to 25. If you get to the bottom of the page and want to keep reading, click on “Older Posts,” and the next batch of stories will open in a new window. If anybody has further input on speed issues, leave a comment.

Update II: The WHIO ticker was removed – as were the bookmark badges (facebook, digg, etc.) which nobody seemed to use anyway. The speed seems much improved.

>After all the hoopla, it turns out that an old advisory opinion prohibits the type of job change that was anticipated for Terry Haworth to the economic development office. Terry will now keep his seat as commissioner and presumably spend the next year-and-a-half finishing an incredible 20-year run in office.

In the meantime, there was a lot of talk around town about the “old boys network” and the like. The problem here was not any actual conflict of interest, but the potential for perceived conflict of interest. And there are fair arguments on both sides. Not many are aware that Haworth was ready to accept the job at far less pay than what was advertised. We are probably going to end up paying somebody else more for a job Haworth would have done very well. On the positive side, we keep his expertise in the commissioners’ office.

The entertaining part of this episode was the mad scrum to name the new commissioner – and the interesting media coverage of said scrum. Stay tuned for more comments on that … possibly.

>According to WHIO, this renovation of the traffic circle in Greenvile will cost about $600,000 with the cost being split between a grant from the Ohio Department of Transportation (80%) and the City of Greenville paying the balance (20%). Although the $600,000 is an estimate, that breakdown would be: ODOT – $480,000 … Greenville – $120,000.

>EUM Church will be presenting a weekly Divorce Care seminar, which will take place Thursdays at 6:30 p.m. beginning June 4th. The program is described as “nondenominational and features biblical teaching for recovering from divorce and separation.”